Television audiences felt uneasy about a new Wrangler Jeans commercial starring Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick.
The commercial, featuring Vick in Wrangler Jeans, a flannel shirt and a cowboy hat, aired during the Eagles Chargers game this Sunday on Fox. It depicted the controversial quarterback enjoying the great outdoors with two veteran Wrangler endorsees, NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. and former Packers quarterback Brett Favre.
Fox received hundreds of negative letters about the commercial from viewers on Monday.
“I just don’t find Michael Vick sitting in the cab of a muddy pickup truck with his cowboy boots dangling off the edge very believable,” wrote one man from Illinois. “And I found the part where he was playing monkey-in-the-middle with Brett Favre and Favre’s golden retriever particularly unsettling.”
Vick’s monologue at the end of the commercial received the most criticism from Sunday viewers.
Vick, on horseback at this point, smiles at the camera and announces in an exaggerated southern drawl, “Whether I’m riding around on my four-wheeler, chopping wood in the back yard or going camping, I need my real, comfortable Wrangler jeans.”
Wrangler says they were simply trying to appeal to a new target market.
“Dagnabbit, we just want all sorts of folks to wear Wranglers,” company President Phil McAdams said in an interview Wednesday.
The backlash has forced Wrangler to rethink its next ad campaign, which would have featured NBA star Jeremy Lin and former great Yao Ming playing street basketball in denim overalls.
